Three months before each trek we advise participants who the two Australian trek leaders for your adventure will be. All our trek leaders are adventurers in their own right having achieved some of the most difficult physical pursuits such as summitting Mt Everest, swimming the English Channel, running the Overland Track in Tasmania in under 24 hours, kayaking Bass Strait, or cycling the length of Vietnam on a mountain bike. They are skilled in leadership, local history and customs, and logistics. And importantly, they each have a good sense of humour, a desire to enjoy life, and are selfless. Our medics and doctors are highly experienced in remote adventure locations. Our local guides have excellent English, are thoroughly connected into the local communities that we pass through and are strong leaders of our Porter and Sherpa teams. You are in the safest, best skilled hands.

Adventure Excellence provides just about everything that is not of a personal nature. Most of our participants would spend less than $600 on boots/shoes, walking poles, shorts/pants, inoculations and personal first aid kit plus electrolytes. You may also like to buy some local fruit or drinks as you trek, but they are very inexpensive. Many participants prefer to hire a porter for the Kokoda Trail to carry everything for them beside their water and food. A full porter for your own personal service is $700, or you could elect to share a porter for $350 which is the most common choice. We go above and beyond to support our Porters providing accommodation in Port Moresby, a flight home after the trek, all their meals and requirements, and pay them wages well above the standard rate.

Adventure Excellence takes your preparation very seriously. We provide a professionally prepared 12-week training program, a pre-assessment that will determine how much preparation you need to do, and we also require a signed medical clearance for every participant. Now, that doesn’t mean you need to be an elite athlete at all. It does mean that the more you prepare, the more you are likely to enjoy your adventure, and the better mentally prepared you will be to handle the conditions. Most of our adventures are graded 4 on a scale of 5. This means you can expect to be trekking up to ten hours in a day at moderate to high intensity. To put that in context, the average middle-aged adult could likely complete a 3/5 adventure with only a month of training. We will get you ready; we will monitor your progress throughout the training period; and you will be confident that you will be successful and safe during the adventure. This is a tested and proven monitored training program with an unbeatable success rate.